It is approximately 2:45 in the afternoon on Thursday the 11th of April, 2013. Your name is John Egbert, something which perhaps should have had factual priority over the time and date. The time and date is, however, more important than it would have been given a different situation, because right now, you're pondering over the large family calendar on the refrigerator. You take a moment to swell with pride at the fact that said appliance belongs to you now, as does everything else in this new residence. It's all yours.
Alright, you've had your little moment, now it's time to get back to the plot. You're staring at the calendar. You're staring at a particular part of the calendar, where the following Saturday was marked around the edges with bright blue ink in order to signify some sort of importance to that day. You should know; you marked it. That shade of blue isn't the shade of blue you ideally would have picked, but you bought a packet of coloured markers a while ago and once the trolls had all had their pick of the pack (and had bitched vigorously when it was discovered that practically none of the colours were accurate at all to anyone. Apparently trolls have very accurate colour vision) there was very little left for you to choose from. You're pretty happy with light blue, though. It stands out on the pages. You can't tell whether this is because of the colour or just because of how often you write on the calendar, though. You can't say the same about Karkat's angry scrawls. The only possible pen in the pack for him was a disappointingly pale shade of grey that was very easily written over by someone else and made completely redundant, but you thought it was kind of nice when he would steal Dave's red when he wanted to write something of extreme importance.
Oh, yes, of course. I forgot to mention that you're living with the trolls now. In your own house, nonetheless, that you can call yours. You're pretty sure you didn't already mention that. You have another little internal fistpump about it. Enough of that! The trolls live with you now, on Earth. This happens to be relevant to the significance of next Saturday, because next Saturday will mark the third anniversary of the trolls' arrival on Earth. It will also mark the day exactly two years, seven months and twelve days ago, when the trolls were discovered by the authorities, or "Those Probing Fuckasses" as they have since been known, and will mark exactly two months and six days ago that they were released, with some reluctance on TPF's part, from their highly classified location and allowed to live in a specialised residential complex - which TPF had so kindly built for them – with four pink human children named John, Rose, Dave and Jade.
Of course, "children" was now a slightly non applicable term to use as far as you and the other humans are concerned, but the trolls still consider you to be human infants in as much the same way they consider themselves to be troll infants, mostly because their innate cultural instincts tell them that not yet being ten feet tall is an indicator of infancy. You don't mind. You and the others might be almost nineteen years old now (and a lot older than that in reality, what with all the growing up you had to do when the game started), but deep down, you know that you'll always be "the kids". You're happy with that. It reminds you of the old times.
You're pretty happy with how things are overall. Now, at least. The last few years weren't so easy. Karkat was, naturally, the first to arrive, and he spent almost a week hiding out at your house. That week was fun, and at the time, you had thought it the most fun you'd ever had in your life, because Karkat was so interesting. He had a perpetually scrunched-up face and bristled whenever he was spoken to; he was everything you expected him to be – if a lot taller than you expected, about on par with you, and you didn't quite reach the average for your age – and you were certain you could never get tired of him. Dave, on the other hand... Well, we won't go into those details.
That week had been great, but the week that followed brought the arrival of Gamzee, eagerly following Karkat through the modified Transportalizer. The first thing you noticed when he appeared was that he was inhumanly tall. He had to be nearing seven feet, and his lanky, gangly figure accentuated his height even further. He was all sharp angles and lines; sharp cheekbones, sharp claws and long pointed ears. Frankly, he looked terrifying. You could most easily compare him to the kind of troll you'd expect to find hiding under your bed, peeking at you over the footboard with those glowing yellow-and-indigo eyes (the indigo, you noted, was brighter than Karkat's red, and you later learned that Gamzee couldn't remember when his wriggling day was, and that they had recently estimated that he was almost one sweep ahead of the rest) and grinning menacingly at you with those sharp... Gnashers. Yeah, "gnashers" is definitely the right word, you think, with how jagged and irregular they are, and how he shows them off so readily.
You supposed that you were going to have to get used to the fact that trolls are trolls, aka alien, and aren't going to meet human standards of aesthetic appeal. Your human brain, after generations of development and learning from fictional horror, dislikes what it sees. You decided not to judge the troll books by their scary troll covers from that point forward, because Gamzee was just as sweet and laid-back as he had always been, and you soon taught your brain that there was nothing to be afraid of.
That was only the first obstacle, though. Gamzee is friendly, but something that did not come as a surprise was that he is easily distracted. Keeping him indoors and out of sight was an immense challenge. It wasn't that he ignored you – he never hesitated to do as you asked, as long as you asked him directly and clearly. Bless him, he was trying so hard to be a polite guest, in that weird troll way of theirs. But a few times he had been caught daydreaming out of the window in broad daylight, too encapsulated in how different the sky looked than on Alternia to notice the people walking past the house in clear view, local neighbours that were so close to noticing the giant, grey, horned figure standing in the window.
When he stalked from the house to explore the garden one night, spontaneously followed a cat over the fence, landed loudly in the neighbour's garden and thus activated their patio light before proceeding to stand directly under it and stare dumbly at it for half a minute, you started to realise that you had a potentially serious risk on your hands. It got your mind whirring, and the reality began to truly sink in: you were playing host to two-soon-to-be-twelve aliens from another universe, and that would, to all extents and purposes, be treated as First Fucking Contact by international authorities should the trolls' existence be revealed. You knew that if they were captured, they would be restrained underground in some thirty-storey military basement at some highly classified location. They would be probed, interrogated, cut open for scientific research. You would most likely be held captive for the rest of your life for keeping this information a secret, along with everybody else that was associated with the game, and all of your lives would essentially be over. And it would be all your fault for suggesting the visit in the first place.
But it's okay. Don't panic, John. Your life isn't over, nor anyone else's. You know that already. We've already established that fact. It's all good. You have a house now, remember?
Yes, you remember now. You remember that the trolls were discovered a few weeks after Gamzee's fence-vaulting incident when the rest of the trolls had arrived, and they were probed to the extent of moderate discomfort for some time, but they weren't put in any serious pain and they weren't dissected. They complained, sure, but things could have been worse. You know that. You also remember that there was an urgent tone in the rare communications you got with the trolls when they were held in, but you weren't made aware as to why until after they were released over two years later, when Sollux was able to inform you that their window of opportunity to return to Alternia that he'd made had long passed. The trolls were stuck on Earth – or, at the very least, stuck in that universe.
You don't really know the full extent of how your troll tenants feel about the way things have turned out, but you wouldn't have had it any other way.
A/N (Edit): Wow, I hadn't expected to have so many favouriters and followers! I've counted two favouriters and four followers, which I think is a lot for my first published fan fic, so thank you! Knowing that I have people behind me waiting for my next update is a real encouragement for me and very motivating, so expect an update within the next day or so.
I'm actually pretty new to the fandom – only got introduced to Homestuck about two months ago, and I haven't finished it yet (obviously) – so please let me know if there are any huge canonical errors. Thanks again!